Emerging from the Trümmerfilm rubble of a still scarred postwar British North, wanders Patricia Healey, a suicidal brunette with angelic, ethereal eyes deeper than a well. More a ghost, than a fully fledged character, she radiates a sense of disconnection, fascinated by those around her, cut from the same cloth, yet at a passive distance. Her purpose is to represents us, both as moving camera, and the objective gaze of the viewer, allowing us to study our own world with anonymity.

To some extent this wandering angel is familiar, from both the Beatnik culture of the day, and the wandering, somnambulist characters of French New Wave Cinema (Jeanne Moreau’s midnight stroll in ‘Ascenseur pour l’Echafaud’, and in ‘Cléo de 5 à 7’, Corinne Marchand’s endless lilting wander, from Parisian Doctor’s office, to boutique, to cafe). Here though, we have some degree of order, travelling the city with a Civic Bus Tour, pointing out what we should be interested in, establishing some degree of direction upon our meandering nomad, providing a beginning, a middle and a clear end to proceedings. The Documentary maker as tour guide.

What does predominate within the heart of ‘The White Bus’, is this sense of the secret insider.. since both the Director Lindsay Anderson, (born in British India), and the author Shelagh Delaney, (born in Lancashire, though of distinctly Irish heritage), express a love and a sense of belonging to English culture and the landscape, but perhaps unintentionally bring an unbiased objectivity too. Along with the film’s author and Director, the sense of a fresh eye, is further given by it’s Czech Cinematographer, Miroslav Ondricek, adding elements of the Czech New Wave to his angles and treatment of the cityscapes.. bringing a sense of ethereal Prague, to the British landscape. Ondricek eventually answered the call to Hollywood, and went on to shine ever brighter behind the camera on such notable pieces as ‘The World According to Garp’, ‘Silkwood’, and ‘Amadeus’.

Lindsay Anderson initially hit his stride with some remarkably poignant Public Service style ‘kitchen sink’ documentaries made during the 1940’s & 50’s, centering his keen focus upon the ordinary inhabitants of schools and society’s working institutions.. Covent Garden Market.. Dreamland’s amusements.. a school for the deaf.. an anti-nuclear march.. all served up in a thought provoking and accessible form. From here, Anderson advanced to full length films, though continuing to concentrate on familiar ground. With ‘This Sporting Life’, the violence of a rugby player boils over into life beyond the confines of the field.. and in the iconic ‘If..’, a Public School erupts into chaos, as the students murderously ‘take over the asylum’. ‘The White Bus’ is no less subversive a piece, but by keeping it’s central character mute for much of film, the audience is carried along for the ride with the same sense of disconnection as it’s protagonist. The result is one of fascination with society ‘from without’, neutral and scientific, rather than overtly critical. Both we, and our central character are but a ghost in the machine. Neither affecting, nor affected by the world, merely observing, or offering a bemused smile.

‘The White Bus’ was originally intended to be released as part of a trilogy of films, collectively titled ‘Red White Zero’, each adapted from short stories by Shelagh Delaney (‘Sweetly sings the donkey’, published 1963), but neither subsequent film reached production. Delaney’s particular vision of a vibrant, cynical North characterized her literary style, and through her two screenplays for ‘A Taste of Honey’, and ‘Charlie Bubbles’, firmly established the North Country as a key locale in the British New Wave.

It is quite tempting to believe that perhaps Lindsay Anderson had Delaney herself in mind when he selected actress Patricia Healey for the lead. There is a decided similarity in look and posture between the two women, and after the success of ‘A Taste of Honey’, Delaney was becoming a notable creative in the public eye. The long dark hair, solemn expression and soulful eyes match almost too well for coincidence.

In addition, Delaney’s short story contains many personal elements, not only in superficial terms of location, schooling and general attitude, but autobiographically, since her father worked for some years during her childhood as a Bus Inspector, and the trip to a state school during the ‘The White Bus’, feels achingly personal. We write about what we know, of course, and Directors take more than mere words from a writer when they set images and ideas to screen, even more so when they share something of the same perspective.

Shot primarily on moody, atmospheric b&w film, ‘The White Bus’ is peppered with short scenes of almost lurid Eastmancolor, which never fail to shock and surprise whenever they appear. Lindsay Anderson used the same effect in his later film ‘If…’, though in reverse, favouring mostly colour film, dropping in sporadic b&w scenes. It’s often assumed that the expensive nature of colour film was the determining factor, causing the majority of scenes in ‘The White Bus’ to be shot on b&w, where funds were unavailable, and limiting the colour filming in ‘If…’. It does seems far too deliberate a choice at times though, especially in ‘The White Bus’, where the use of colour appears more an avant-guarde motif. Fritz Lang faced similar concerns with his 1st Sound film, the ground breaking ‘M’, juxtaposing between Sound film and pure Silent scenes to keep under budget.. but he somehow made these cost cutting necessities part of the German Expressionist style, by focusing on the visuals for chase scenes, and saving his precious Sound film for close-ups. In neither ‘The White Bus’, nor ‘If…’, is there any clear reasoning behind colour or b&w selection, other than artistic or random whim. The overall effect is bold and original, so I suppose the intention, or lack thereof, doesn’t really matter anyway.

As the film progresses the inhabitants of this dream-like landscape seem to become less and less connected to reality, and the sense of documentary intent merges with that of surrealism, bringing to mind aspects of Dali’s ‘Un Chien Andalou’ (1929), and mysterious Maya Deren’s ‘Meshes in the Afternoon’ (1943). Different subjects for documentary are laid out before us, as the Bus Tour shifts from location to location, passing through State School, newly completed blocks of flats, the wheels of industry, anthropological glass cases of stuffed animals on display, and elaborate war reenactments over scrub land.

At one point, in full glorious colour, we have elaborate tableau set out before us in park scenes, as we parade through reconstructions of famous paintings by Goya, Fragonard and Manet, later to be imitated rather beautifully by those clever Guinness adverts in the early 90’s, with a wry Rutger Hauer interrupting the classics.

~

Ultimately the passengers themselves are reduced to mere dress dummies, as the dream of the Bus Tour loses solidity, and dissipates on the air, leaving only our protagonist to wander off once more. Eventually even she becomes a less and less noticed by those around her, a ghost sat in a chip shop at closing time, while chairs are stacked on tables around her. She and the audience must go home. Turn the lights off please.

Some have it, some don’t

‘It’s not like that…’

‘..it’s an exaggeration. He’s just got a certain success with the ladies..’

‘Just come to London. Nowhere to stay. And glad of it we are. No trouble, us monks.’

‘After kicks.. it’s all happening.. it’ll all end in tears.. and no Prince Charming with a barrel.. Drugs! We all know what she wants, and it isn’t the YWCA.. Plates of meat.. Hoping she is.. Hoping to being debauched.. innocent eyes of blue, doesn’t know what her legs are walking herself into..’

‘Shall I show you,Colin? Shall I advise you? Women like to be dominated.’

‘I never thought I’d see so much purity of pattern. Absolute rightness. I must please you, and I think I can. Don’t fail me now, because I may never trust myself with a woman again, ever. Try it on. I’m sure, absolutely, I can please you. Show me. Wait for me.’

‘I want something sexy. Cruelty, with a very loud noise.. ‘

‘..I just don’t see myself in a cast-iron bed..’

‘I don’t know.. I feel.. I feel.. funny.’

‘Now.. now then.. what is it? What do you want with me? What are you trying on, eh? What are you trying to do? Mr.Smart.. Mr.Smarty.. Smarty.. Smart.. You think you’re alright.. You think you’re pretty clever. You do, don’t you, Mr. Smarty, tight, tight trousers.. Mr. narrow slacks. You think you’re the cats..’

‘Keep asking me. Go on, ask me how I feel.’

————————————-

………………………………………………………STARK RAVING MOD

RITA TUSHINGHAM INTERVIEW by Will Hodgkinson : The Guardian (15/06/01)

It’s the eyes that hit you. The eyes that shone with jaded hope in A Taste of Honey and with helpless innocence in Doctor Zhivago; that were plastered with too much mascara in Smashing Time and burst open with gawky delight in The Knack. The eyes that came to be as much a part of the 1960s landscape as miniskirts and Mini Coopers. The famous heavy-fringed black bob has gone blonde, and her swinging heyday may be a distant memory, but the eyes remain the same.”Would you like some tea?” asks Rita Tushingham, a hint of her Liverpudlian origins still in her voice and manner – this despite the 40 years that have elapsed since she left her home town to star in A Taste of Honey.

Now living alone in a large, ornately decorated Mayfair flat, her 96-year-old mother still up in Liverpool and her daughters having flown the coop, the 61-year-old actress continues to enjoy her work. “It’s great to have a job you find rewarding, but let’s face it, we’re not saving people’s lives. ‘Oh gosh, they’ve got a larger Winnebago than me!’ Who cares? It’s what ends up on the screen that counts. Just don’t read the reviews!” Back in the early 1960s, Tushingham was a key member of that first rush of British actors to make it from humble beginnings. She cut her teeth by acting in plays at her convent school and then trained at the Liverpool Rep before responding to a newspaper advertisement in 1961 and being handed the lead in Tony Richardson’s breakthrough kitchen-sink drama A Taste of Honey. Though she was a waif, her arrival into British cinema was dramatic. She played a Salford teenager falling pregnant by a black sailor and finding solace in the friendship of a gay man, and won a Bafta for most promising newcomer, a best-actress award at Cannes and entry into an exclusive new club.”

A Taste of Honey was successful so I went straight from that to other movies and I only knew this new world, which was coming to life for the first time,” she explains. “There were people like myself – Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay and Julie Christie – and only when it got to the 1970s and things started to dry up did I realise what a special time it was. I was naive. I came from Liverpool and just thought, ‘So this is what it’s like down here.'” A Taste of Honey, meanwhile, was arousing controversy across the world as it confronted racial and sexual taboos head on. Many countries banned it. “New Zealand was one,” remembers Tushingham, one arm flitting as it does in so many of her movies. “You had a gay man and Paul Danquah’s sailor and me as a teenage prostitute and Dora Bryan as her brassy mother whose attitude is ‘fook ’em’ and Robert Stephens who was drunk all the time…The film was saying: ‘This is how these people live, and they’re getting on with their lives.’ They couldn’t pay the rent so they climbed out of the window with their suitcases and off they went. It was shocking for people at the time. But now my character could be 12 and no one would mind.”

With her gamine beauty and camp northern humour, it isn’t surprising that Morrissey considered her fabulous enough to be the cover star for the Sandie Shaw / Smiths single Hand in Glove in 1984 – a shot from A Taste of Honey. Her debut film was also the beginning of Rita Tushingham’s status as a gay icon. She would go on to bring life to characters that would be feted more by homosexual men than by heterosexual ones – the teenage wife she played in The Leather Boys (1963), for example, who slowly discovers that her husband’s special friendship with a fellow cycling enthusiast isn’t based on a shared love of axle lubricant alone. “You’ll find that film in the cult sections of video shops, and it’s a huge cult movie in the States,” says Tushingham. In truth, she cuts an unlikely figure, whose touches of glamour – splashes of silver and sequins in her outfit, a row of small candles lit for my visit – are offset by an old-fashioned sense of hospitality that ensures plates of biscuits are on the coffee table. “I don’t know if I’m a gay icon or not, but with A Taste of Honey, the audience were so touched by the whole story that it certainly helped matters. The characters were so sympathetic that it was as if you had met them.”

Tushingham then plunged into Richard Lester’s sexual-revolution comedy The Knack, confirming her status as a key face of the emergent social order. Her mix of innocence and feisty humour made her perfect for the role of a young northern girl fighting off the attentions of two men, one shy and the other seductive. “Since then, Richard [Lester] and his wife Deirdre have become my closest friends, and I’ve seen how Richard lets the audience observe things as if they were sitting in a park and watching something funny happen nearby,” she says. “The Knack is a gem.” I mention a memorable scene where Tushingham, in a bid to cross the road, pretends to be pregnant and the car screeches to a halt. “It’s exactly like that, though, isn’t it? Trying to get across Oxford Street is impossible and these days they don’t even care if you’re pregnant.”

In 1965 she was cast opposite Alec Guinness in David Lean’s epic Doctor Zhivago, playing the confused, fragile orphan of Omar Sharif’s Zhivago and Julie Christie’s Lara. “If you want to do an epic now, you have to have special effects, don’t you?” she says. “David Lean took a beautiful love story and wasn’t afraid to give it passion. All the layers and depth of feeling were there. Why be afraid of the content of the story? Surely special effects should only be an addition rather than a replacement, as they seem to be today.” But the apotheosis of Tushingham’s swingerhood (and one of her most under-rated films) predicted our current obsession with celebrity. In 1967 she went “stark raving mod”, as the posters had it, with Smashing Time. The George Melly-scripted film was filled with slapstick and slaps in the face to the movers and shakers of London’s swinging scene, including David Bailey and the Rolling Stones’ first manager Andrew Loog Oldham. It was savaged upon its release.

“Linnie (Lynn Redgrave) and I, who had been friends since we were 18, absolutely loved doing it,” she enthuses, “but nobody realised it was tongue-in-cheek – they thought we were trying to be trendy!” In Smashing Time, Lynn Redgrave’s Yvonne becomes a tacky pop star, with spooky parallels of Geri Halliwell; Tushingham’s Brenda becomes a reluctant fashion model, secretly unimpressed by the fame whirligig she has stepped on to. “Look at the scene at the end when they’re at the party (for Yvonne’s single) which everyone is trying to get into and be seen at. That’s what it’s like now. These days people really would go to the opening of an envelope, wouldn’t they?”

Tushingham may have played some of the key icons of the 1960s, but her identification with that era brought career problems as the excitement made way for a more sober, cynical decade. Her 1960s roles came to an end with two movies, both made in 1969: The Guru, James Ivory’s sceptical look at faddish spiritual tourism (Tushingham and Michael York go to India and meet a charismatic maharishi, George Harrison-style); and the apocalyptic madness of Richard Lester’s The Bed Sitting Room (after a nuclear war, a disparate group of Londoners live on tube trains and survive on chocolate from vending machines). Then suddenly it was the 1970s. Doe-eyed innocence was out of style. Tushingham’s first film of the new decade was the brutally misogynist Straight on Till Morning – in which the psychotic man seducing her is a long way from the suitor played by Ray Brooks in The Knack.Television appearances and Italian and Israeli films filled the years, leading to a run of German films in the 1980s and a new lease of life and work in the mid-1990s.

She starred alongside Hugh Grant in An Awfully Big Adventure in 1995, Tom Courtenay in The Boy from Mercury a year later, and Samantha Morton in Under the Skin the year after that. She plays Sean Maguire’s mum in the about-to-be released gangland tale Out of Depth and has just received a grant to direct her first short. She is also pushing forward the development of a feature film she hopes to direct, Victory Girls, which tells the story of a group of women working in a first-world-war Preston munitions factory who form a football team. “They did it to raise money for the war effort and ended up drawing larger crowds than the men,” she explains. “So the FA banned them.”

“Directing seems like a logical progression for me, although I would never put myself in a film of mine. How can you? Putting on make-up while you’re trying to concentrate on setting up the next shot? No, no.” After all these years, there’s still more than a touch of Smashing Time’s Our Brenda about Our Rita. Her personal life remains off territory; she says she is baffled by the faddishness of the modern age (“In Los Angeles there’s a hotel with a robot butler who does everything for you – he even fills the bath”) and the machinations of an increasingly cold-hearted film industry (“It’s run by lawyers, agents and accountants now, and films aren’t allowed to build as they used to”). She also remains unaffected and – despite the gilded Mayfair pad – modest. What’s more, the eyes still have it.